Recently, an increasing number of hybrid vehicles have been widely used as environmentally friendly vehicles in consideration of the environment. Such an environmentally friendly vehicle is capable of charging a battery through an external plug such as a domestic power supply, and more plug-in hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles have begun to be used, which are driven by using power from a battery charged in such a manner.
Such an environmentally friendly vehicle is equipped with a battery of a relatively large size. Not only a battery, but also charging equipment, such as a charger for charging the battery, a charging connector, and an outlet cable for connecting the charger to the charging connector, is installed in a plug-in hybrid vehicle and an electric vehicle. Therefore, a special structure is employed in such an environmentally friendly vehicle in consideration of arrangement of a battery, charging equipment and the like, and an increasing number of new special vehicle bodies have been developed for such environmentally friendly vehicles. Unfortunately, it is costly to develop a new special vehicle body, and thus it has been desired to develop an environmentally friendly vehicle at low cost.
In order to satisfy such needs, Patent Document 1 proposes an environmentally friendly vehicle produced by utilizing a vehicle body of a conventional vehicle. Patent Document 1 discloses a structure of a vehicle having a spare tire housing which is disposed at a substantially center of a rear floor panel in a rear vehicle body and has a recessed shape projecting downward of a vehicle body, and in such a vehicle structure, a battery is installed so as to occupy the entire space of the spare tire housing. In the structure of Patent Document 1, a charger which is a relatively larger component among the charging equipment can be installed in the spare tire housing, thus it is supposed to form a hole for inserting the outlet cable through the spare tire housing so that an outlet cable for connecting the charger and a charging connector is installed all the way around in a short route.